Barack Obama wins, and a “long national nightmare is over”

Gerald R. Ford, upon being sworn in as president on August 9, 1974, after the resignation of his Watergate-tainted, criminal predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, said it best.

Today, in the wake of yesterday’s historic U.S. presidential election, Ford’s words have a profound resonance. Newly minted as the nation’s 38th president, Ford said: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.”

Last night at Grant Park, in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama greeted supporters at a rally after being declared the winner of the 2008 U.S. presidential election; with him was his wife, Michelle Obama

That last bit – about the people ruling – will come as unwelcome news to the soon-to-be-gone Bush-Cheney gang who’ve just been given the boot, but around the world, the message is clear: their reckless reign is almost over, and the American people have come to their senses in choosing not to let it continue for four more years under the business-as-usual command of the Republicans’ old-style McCain-Palin team, which U.S. voters soundly rejected.

Notes Agence France Presse in a report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation‘s website: “Americans have elected Democrat Barack Obama as their first black president in a transformational election, which will reshape U.S. politics and reposition the United States on the world stage.” One reader of this breaking news report wrote on the ABC‘s website: “Free at last of Bush and the Republicans! A historic day for the U.S. and the whole world. Celebrate good times, c’mon!” Another reader wrote in and stated: “This has to be the most exciting moment in my life! I am actually witnessing history in the making….”

The U.S. presidential-election campaigns have been closely followed by audiences around the world; last night, customers in a bar in Prague watched the election results on television

In Kogelo, a village in Kenya in which Obama’s paternal grandmother lives and where his Kenyan father (who died in 1982) was born, hundreds of residents “erupted into song and dance” upon learning that its favorite foreign son had won the U.S. presidential election. “Swinging twigs and chairs in the air, men cheered and clapped while women ululated and shouted ‘Obama! Obama!’” One man in the village told a reporter: “Because Obama has won, we will have a change in the whole world.” A school teacher in Kogelo remarked: “Obama and America have shown the world what true democracy is all about….” Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, “was among the first foreign heads of state to congratulate Obama and gave Kenyans one more reason to rejoice when he declared Thursday a public holiday in a statement issued minutes after Republican John McCain conceded.” (Agence France Presse via Canada.com)

In a victory speech delivered before a crowd of more than 60,000 who had gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama looked ahead to the challenges he’ll face in what Germany’s Die Welt called “the hardest job in the world.” Looking and sounding optimistic and determined, Obama told the cheering Chicago throng: “Change has come to America….Even as we celebrate tonight we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the biggest of our lifetime.” The Australian notes that he “spoke of repairing America’s relations with the world,” saying: “The road ahead will be long, and our climb will be steep….We may not get there in one year, or even in one term. But America, I have never been more hopeful that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. This victory alone is not the change we seek, it is the chance to achieve that change….A new dawn of American leadership is here.”

Last night in Times Square, New York, Obama supporters cheered when they learned that their candidate had won in Pennsylvania

Going into last night’s election-results coverage on television, a U.S. presidential-campaign news blog on the British daily the Guardian‘s website noted: “Doesn’t it seem odd that it’ll soon be over – this insane, historic, aggravating, stirring, inspiring, profoundly moving and ridiculous thing that’s been a part of our lives for so many months? But the final rallies have taken place, and in a few hours, barring the completely unforeseen, it really will end, amid guaranteed scenes of intense emotion.”

Alas, in some quarters, some of that emotion turned out to be less than joyous. As a contributor to the “Trailblazers” political-news blog on the website of the Dallas Morning News reported in an entry posted late last night, “There [were] about 10 people [Dallas Republicans] with me around a TV tuned to the Obama speech. By the end, they had all walked off. Most sighed as they walked away or shook their heads….[T]he group around me spent the first five minutes squinting at the TV to see if Obama was wearing a flag pin (for the record, he was). As the speech ended, there was some yelling from the other side of the room. The one word I was able to discern [was] ‘recount.’ I don’t think that will be happening.”